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Engineering, Building, and Architecture

Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.

The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.

The citation information for this 40-page booklet is: G. Coradi, The Coradi Planimeters: Description and Instructions for the Use and Testing, with a General Elementary Explanation of Their Operation (Zurich, 1912). Gottlieb Coradi (1847–1929) established a workshop in Zurich in 1880 and began making wheel and disc polar planimeters in the Amsler style soon thereafter. In 1894, he designed the compensating polar planimeter, and by 1900, his firm was selling a precision rolling planimeter.

This booklet explains the mathematical theory behind planimeters, which are used to measure the area bounded by a curved diagram. Coradi then describes the general parts of a planimeter and provides instructions for the forms manufactured by his workshop: the rolling sphere planimeter (see MA*333660 and 1977.0112.01), the precision disc planimeter (see MA*321745), and the compensating polar planimeter (see 1987.0929.01 and MA*321777). Olaus Henrici (1840–1918), a German mathematician who taught at English universities, helped Coradi prepare the booklet.

The donor also provided three Coradi pamphlets on the coordinatograph, an instrument for quickly plotting points on a map according to their rectangular coordinates. According to the illustrations at the back of this booklet, Coradi's firm also made integraphs and pantographs.

References: "People: Gottlieb Coradi," Waywiser, Harvard University Department of the History of Science, http://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/emuseumdev/code/eMuseum.asp?lang=EN; Olaus Henrici, "On Planimeters," in Report of the Sixty-fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1894), 496–523.

This undated large 8-page booklet is written in German and titled, "Gebrauchsanleitung für Amsler's Planimeter." It describes and depicts nine types of polar planimeter sold by the firm established by Jacob Amsler in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in 1854. The instructions indicate that Type 1 and Type 2 were distinguished by their materials; Type 1 was made of brass and Type 2 (see MA*318485 and 1984.1071.01) was made of German silver. Similarly, Type 3 (1986.0316.05) was made of brass and Type 4 was made of German silver. The Museum also owns an example of Type 6 (MA*335203). Types 8 and 9 are wheel-and-disc polar planimeters. See 1999.0250.02 for an English translation of the pamphlet.

Papers contain archival materials comprising Bathe's research on Oliver Evans (1755-1819), an American engineer engaged in the development of steam engines. The collection includes copies of letters, design drawings, pamphlets and a book written by Evans, patents, a scrapbook, articles, genealogical information, Evans' will, and writings by Bathe on Evans, including his book about him. Correspondence with libraries and other scholars is included, as are papers relating to the book such as reviews, notebooks, papers relating to the printing and publishing. There is also research material on American engineer Jacob Perkins, for Bathe's books Citizen Genet (1946), Horizontal Windmills (1948), and Ship of Destiny...Merrimac (1951), and assorted trade catalogs and materials pertaining to Bathe's manufacturing companies in London and Philadelphia. A photograph album compiled by Bathe containing photographs and sketches of models built by Bathe is also included.

The citation information for this 16-page tissue paper pamphlet is: Instructions for Operating Ever-There Slide Rule No. 4098 (New York: Keuffel & Esser, 1932). The pamphlet describes an earlier version of 1989.0325.06. It lists various uses for slide rules and provides detailed drawings and explanations for reading numbers and making calculations on the slide rule. Sample problems are solved in multiplication and division, proportion, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, trigonometry, and logarithms.

The booklet explains the operation, care, and use of compensating polar planimeters, with several pages on tracing areas and making calculations. Five tables of factors and settings for scale drawings or maps are provided. The booklet also discusses factors influencing the accuracy of the instrument and highlights adjustments and measurements unique to K&E model 4242, which had adjustable arms. See 1999.0250.01 and 1998.0032.03. Finally, the general mathematical theory of the polar planimeter is outlined.

The citation information for this 52-page stapled booklet is: H. J. Gerber, The Gerber GraphAnalogue (Hartford, Conn.: The Gerber Scientific Instrument Company, 1953). The booklet explains the construction and use of the Gerber GraphAnalogue. (See 1994.0113.02.)

It then describes typical problems that could be solved with the instrument: plotting a family of curves; reading printed graphs without having to replot them; reproducing drawings at unusual scales; normalizing curves; interpolating points; counting frequency cycles; enlarging or reducing diagrams; determining pressure ratios; solving navigation and center of gravity problems; reading oscillograms and aerial photographs; spacing rivets; setting up engineering scales; determining a rate of elevation; estimating functions; and multiplying and dividing. The company sold specially-sized graph paper that could be laid on the base in order to plot curves.

This four-page pamphlet shows model 125 of the Lasico square root planimeter, which sold in the 1940s for $135.00. It had a tracer point, unlike the later model 2000-V (2011.0043.01 and 2011.0043.02), which had a tracer lens. The pamphlet explains how to read the instrument and apply its readings to rate of flow calculations.

This material was solicited from ASCE by Robert M. Vogel of NMAH in 1971-1975. ASCE, through its executive directors, coordinated the collection of the papers from the various authors.

Summary

Technical papers by Mr. Camp and other Fellows of ASCE, published in The ASCE Journal or other professional journals in the field of civil engineering. They deal primarily with problems of water supply and sewage disposal.

Cite as

American Society of Civil Engineers Fellows Collection, 1929-1969, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

American architect of commercial and public buildings, b. Zanesville, Ohio; educated in St. Paul, Minnesota. Firmly supportive of the European tradition and the eastern academic league of architects. Among his many familiar public buildings are the Treasury Annex and the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., the state capitol buildings of West Virginia, Arkansas, and Minnesota, and the public libraries of St. Louis and Detroit. His most famous building is the Woolworth Building in New York (1913); with its 55 stories and Gothic ornament, it is considered Gilbert's greatest achievement.

Summary

Correspondence (1919-1932), contracts, statistical data, news clippings, booklets, miscellaneous Gilbert papers, three volumes of specification data of the Supreme Court Buildings, twenty pencil and pastel sketchbooks of Gilbert's periodic travels in Europe, 1897-1932, and a box of miscellaneous unbound sketches, including many for the Supreme Court. The bulk of the collection consists of bound volumes containing photoprints of forty-one Gilbert buildings under construction.

Photographers include Belden & Company (45 Clinton Street, Newark, N.J.) and P. O. Valentine (33 Homestead Park, Newark, N.J.). The photographs are mounted on linen, in cloth-covered loose-leaf binders bearing building or project names. Most photograph volumes each contain more than 100 prints, including duplicates. For example, Vol. 49, on the Seaside Sanatorium (Waterford, Conn.) contains 149 prints from approx. 75 different negatives.

Cite as

Cass Gilbert Collection, 1897-1936, Archives Center, National Museum of American History